


Dragon, Bear, and Wolves

by Island_of_Reil



Category: Frontier Wolf - Rosemary Sutcliff, Kushiel's Legacy - Jacqueline Carey, Nightrunner Series - Lynn Flewelling
Genre: Archery, Canon Era, Explicit Language, Gen, Military, Soul Bond, Swordplay, Threats of Rape/Non-Con, War
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-16
Updated: 2014-02-16
Packaged: 2018-01-12 16:49:22
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,558
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1192554
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Island_of_Reil/pseuds/Island_of_Reil
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It is entirely possible for one person’s soul to bond with that of another in an entirely different world. But, sometimes, the two do not hold one another’s hearts. They hold something perhaps even more precious: one another’s backs.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Dragon, Bear, and Wolves

**Author's Note:**

> In Nightrunner canon, this story takes place somewhere between _The White Road_ and _Casket of Souls_. For those unfamiliar with this canon there is a glossary of terms [here](http://www.lynnflewelling.com/lynn-flewelling/the-nightrunner-series/nightrunner-glossary/). (Notably absent is the term _drysian_ , a healer-priest in the Dalnan religion.)

_A solitary, slight female figure, her back to him, sits her horse on a vast and unfamiliar plain. She wears a long, richly embroidered robe in a fashion he’s never seen before; her dark braid is pinned up. She has a bow in her honey-colored hands and a quiver on her back._

_Half a dozen swordsmen ride down upon her from across the plain, men with rounded faces and dark, elongated eyes. He’s seen such faces only once before, in a tapestry. She draws on them, but she is one, they are six. A seventh man, another of their kind but his eyes holding only fear for her, rides toward her from the other direction, from behind them both. He carries an unusually long staff across his back but no bow or sword._

_With the strange flowing unthinking motion that comes with dreams, Alec rides up almost alongside her, guiding Windrunner with thighs and knees and heels as he nocks an arrow. The woman, face still unseen, calls out a question that sounds like_ “Bao?” _The man approaching them from behind cries out something urgent in reply that Alec doesn’t understand; he doesn’t even recognize the tongue in which it’s spoken._

_Both bows let fly, and both archers have a new arrow nocked before the first ones lodge in throats. As the first two swordsmen fall, Alec’s next arrow takes a third in the heart, and the woman’s next arrow a fourth in the eye._

_The last two swordsmen realize it is no longer six men against one woman, but two men against two fighters with longer-range weapons than their own, plus one man of unknown quality riding to join them. Terror flashes in their long eyes before they turn tail. They make it less than a hundred yards before arrows thud into their backs and they tumble from their horses._

_The woman expels a long breath, and her head turns—_

Alec sat upright in his bedroll, heart racing as if he’d actually been in battle. He didn’t feel the chill night air on his bare shoulders and back, just the unnatural prickling of his flesh.

“Nightmare, _talí_?” came a sleepy voice from beside him as Seregil’s hand covered his own.

“No,” Alec said, shaking his head. “I dreamed of a woman…” He tried to blink himself awake just enough to recount the tale, not enough to dispel it from his waking mind.

A knowing chuckle. “Oh? Did you enjoy yourself?”

“Not like _that_.” Alec didn’t blush; the teasing was little more than a distraction from his attempt at remembering. “She was an archer in battle. I rode to her aid.”

Seregil sat up beside him, no longer amused. “And?”

Alec frowned. “It was a place I didn’t recognize, an enormous plain. I didn’t see her face, but the six swordsmen coming for her were all dark, with long, tilted eyes. And a seventh man of the same sort was coming to her aid, but he didn’t have a sword or a bow, just a long staff slung across his back.”

“They were Q’in?”

“I … suppose? I’ve only ever seen such men in a tapestry in Plenimar, never in the flesh.”

“Well, their land is a very long ways away.” Seregil still held Alec’s hand but now he gripped it. “What happened?”

“I joined her and we took down four of the six, then the last two after they tried to flee. She turned to look at me, but before I could see her face I woke up. I did see that she had dark hair and her skin was… darker than yours or mine, though not as dark as a Plenimaran’s or Zengati’s. Maybe a bit lighter than your friend Eirual’s. She was wearing a long robe with embroidery on it. That’s all I could tell.” He rubbed at his eyes. “What do you think that was all about? Was it a premonition?”

“I’ve no idea.” Seregil kneaded the back of his own neck indolently with his free hand. “I wish you’d had the dream a few nights ago, before we finished the job in Nanta. The Temple of Illior there is still standing, despite the best efforts of the Plenimarans.”

Alec snorted. “I’d have lost a few coins and gained nothing but another riddle.”

“One man’s riddle is another man’s clue. And clues are our bread and butter, you may remember.”

Alec’s lips twitched. “You’ve a point,” he conceded.

“To change the subject, I do indeed, _talí_. Would you like to blunt it a little, now that we’re rested and we’ve a little time before the sun comes up?” Seregil pulled Alec’s hand into his own lap and pressed it downward. The twitch of the younger man’s lips blossomed into a broad smile before he leaned forward to touch them to those of his lover.

 

_The ringing of blades, the buzz of arrows, the cries of battle. The din is entirely too familiar to her, but the uniforms, the languages, and the desolate moor about them anything but._

_And all the warriors are men, though none of them look Plenimaran; all but a few are fair-skinned and many of them tall. The side nearer her wears worn leather tunics over old, stained breeks with brightly colored cross-garters. The iron-bound caps protecting their skulls are mostly hidden beneath the snarling heads of their wolfskin cloaks. Their skin-covered wicker shields held high, they fight even more fiercely than the beasts who died to cloak them._

_They fight like demon-wolves, she thinks._ Urghazi.

 _Before she knows what she’s doing, her sword is in her hand — and it’s not her Army-issue sword but one that her uncle had_ his _uncle make for her. It’s suited for her grip, her height, the breadth of her shoulders, the strength of her arms. Only Nyal fits to her better._

_The man who draws her eye is tall and lean. His back is to her, and he is fending off two of the enemy, men with long hair bound back in knots. War-paint streaks their faces red and black. Their shields are larger than his own, the skins whitened with lime to blind their enemies when the sun strikes it; their woolen cloaks must be lighter on their backs than his wolfskin is on his._

_She cannot see his face, and of course his hair is concealed beneath helm and hood, but his raised sword arm is as heavily freckled over the hard muscles as is her own. Though her father is as broad-built as this man is lank, her father is the first thing she thinks of._

_She all but leaps to the man’s side, throwing shoulder and hip against him as she raises her sword to his enemies and utters the blood-chilling cry of Urghazi Turma. She feels him twitch in surprise — even without looking, one can tell whether one fights shoulder to shoulder with a shieldbrother or a shieldsister. But it’s only for the barest moment, and then he’s leaning on her as well. She’s his stone wall as well as his second sword._

_Battle is a hot and heavy thing; to kill a man is, strangely, as intimate as to love him. But when her world narrows down to the enemy warrior before her, she is only ever light-footed and filled with a bright inner coldness. The only warmth she feels now is that of the lean, hard form pressing into her side, as she presses into his._

_The fine Aurënfaie blade darts in beyond a lime-bright shield and finds purchase in an enemy heart. The man falls, and another seems to sprout up in his place like a hell-weed that thrives in blood-soaked soil. The tall man lunges at him; he ducks away. Her sword comes up in the gap to slice off the hand of the other enemy warrior harrying her shieldbrother. The man who’d ducked back charges forward again, and she takes a light cut to her sword arm that nonetheless stings viciously. She lets the pain fuel her battle-rage, and she howls again as she opens the man up from throat to loins._

_They fight on in the stench and the heat and the clamor, boots of friends and foes alike occasionally slipping in the blood and entrails. She loses count of how many more they dispatch before the cries of the wolfskin-clad warriors grow more jubilant. She hears hoofbeats and she guesses reinforcements are coming._

_The enemy is not yet beaten, but she and the tall man have the space of a few breaths in the action. He lowers his sword and turns to her—_

Beka blinked into the waking world. Aura’s Bow rode low in the western sky, and the eastern horizon glowed faintly. She sat up, frowning, pondering what she’d just dreamed.

“Captain?” Nikides muttered alongside her.

“I'm fine, Corporal, I just need to piss,” she lied in a low voice. “Go back to sleep.” He made a guttural noise of assent and rolled over away from her.

She figured she might as well get up, in case he stirred again and wondered if she’d intended to piss the bedroll instead. She didn’t bother to put on boots, merely padded barefoot to a stand of trees well away from where her people slept. The chill and scratch of the ground against her tough soles helped clear her head, but the dream had been too vivid to fly away immediately like a cobweb in a windstorm. She wished she could tell it to Nyal right now; he was no oracle, but the Aurënfaie were better than the Tír at deciphering dreams.

Leaning against a tree, Beka mentally ticked through all the military uniforms she’d seen on battlefields before, then tried to remember all the ones in the books her uncle had given her throughout the years. Leather tunics were common as dirt; conversely, the bright cross-gartering over the dark breeks didn’t trip any memories for her. Wicker shields weren’t unheard of, but she didn’t think she’d ever seen hide ones washed with lime before. And, as far as she knew, nobody but Urghazi Turma wore wolfskins in battle.

And the lank, lean man? Was he a distant relation of sorts, though he was built nothing like her or her father or their kin in the Folcwine? Freckles were not uncommon there, but in the Three Lands they were much rarer, and in Aurënen only a very few Gedre _ya’shel_ bore them.

Nyal, she thought, might tease her if she told him about the dream: _Have you taken a dream lover,_ talía _?_ But the tall man had been something much more intimate: a dream shieldbrother. The one who should rightly be jealous, if he’d given a toss about dreams, would be her waking shieldbrother. The battle bond between Beka and Nikides was devoid of romantic love or even erotic tension, but it was no less solid than that she’d shared with her lover-comrade Markus, now long dead. It had taken months to build, yet in the churning combat of the dream she’d felt that same kinship at once with the man whose face she hadn’t even been able to see.

Perhaps it was some sort of portent. Usually, though, dreams were just dreams, and Beka was not much given to contemplating them in the light of day. As she watched the eastern horizon continue to brighten, she let the dream-battle slip from her mind and replaced it with logistics. The sun hadn’t yet risen before she turned back to the bedrolls of Urghazi Turma, ready to wake them for the day’s march.

 

Alec stood flattened taut against a massive oak, bow at the ready. Not two minutes before he’d been pissing behind the tree. The woods in this part of Mycena being full of bandits — both Skala’s and Plenimar’s armies were bleeding deserters left and right — gut instinct had convinced him to sling his bow and quiver over his back before attending to his bladder. Upon hearing the first shouts, he’d hastily tucked himself away, concealed himself while peering out from around the oak bole, and nocked an arrow. Silently he thanked Illior for the instinct — and Dalna for the remnants of his modesty.

“Fucking deserter _coward,_ ” Seregil was snarling, steel ringing on steel as he blocked the bandit’s thrust. “Much easier to ambush innocent men on the road than to face your enemy in battle, eh?” He spoke in Skalan. He was fluent in Plenimaran, but Alec wasn’t, and if this bastard had comrades they didn’t need to know that Seregil could understand them.

The Plenimaran was tall, broad-shouldered, and seventeen at most. “I am no coward, you filthy pigfucking _’faie!_ ” he bellowed in the same tongue as he bore down again on Seregil. In his heavy accent he’d pronounced the last word as though it were as much an insult as the preceding two. Alec considered shooting him, but the fight was moving too fast; the arrow might strike Seregil instead.

“Don’t speak ill of pigfucking,” Seregil grated, parrying again. “If it didn’t exist, neither would you.” Alec’s brows shot up. That wasn’t merely a battle taunt — a thing Seregil didn’t often waste strength or focus on — but a gambit.

The young man roared in fury and rushed forward, sword held high. Seregil took advantage of his blind anger and inexperience to get inside his guard and drive the swordpoint into his breast. Just as he’d pulled it free and the Plenimaran tumbled to his feet, something buzzed right over his shoulder, then a few yards to Alec’s left, like a hornet out of hell.

Seregil dropped to the ground and pulled his dead opponent over himself as cover. Alec released the arrow. A savagely gratifying scream of pain rang out a moment later from the other side of the clearing. He nocked a second arrow and waited, eyes narrowed and teeth clenched, for a new target to present itself.

Six, seven, eight new targets did exactly that — all archers themselves, all masked, and now they knew Seregil didn’t fight alone. They moved fast, even the wounded one, firing arrows at the corpse draped over him and around the oak tree where Alec sheltered, before ducking back behind their own cover. Alec’s second arrow vanished into the darkness where a masked man had just stood.

He swore under his breath. He had nearly a full quiver, but all of them might have the same, and that was eight times as many arrows as he had. He didn’t dare dart out from the cover of the oak to retrieve any of their fallen arrows.

Suddenly he heard the whiz of another arrow — but it had come from his own direction, not toward him. And it had come, somehow, from _above_ him.

He looked up and spied a bare human foot, toes curled around the branch on which it rested. A woman’s foot, with a bit of shin visible above the ankle. Her skin, under the dirt and calluses, was the color of clover honey.

He couldn’t see the other foot, or the rest of the woman, but he could see the fresh spring leaves shift around her as she nocked, drew, and released arrow after arrow. He whipped back around and resumed doing the same.

From across the clearing came more cries of agony, retching, death-gurgles, thuds. Fewer and fewer arrows flew from that direction, and then none at all.

Utter silence and stillness held for several minutes. Then Seregil, who had gone still under the corpse of the first bandit, was cautiously lifting the dead youth off him and peering around.

Alec breathed out heavily, then raised his head again to thank the woman above him. No feet, bare or otherwise, stood on the oak’s branches. Its leaves fluttered in a sudden breeze, revealing nobody behind them.

He swung his head about in wild confusion, surveying the ground that surrounded the oak — but what was the point of looking for tracks? The big tree stood quite alone; any attempt to leap from its branches to those of another would have proven fatal. And if she’d tried, he’d have heard the thrashing of the leaves, just as he’d have heard a thud on the ground.

His skin was prickling again, the same as it had after the dream a few nights before, and his heart racing faster than when he’d been firing across the clearing. He made a warding sign, then pressed the same hand to his throat and swallowed.

“Alec?”

“I'm here.” He swung his head around once more to double-check for stragglers. Then he ran to Seregil’s side and helped drag the dead Plenimaran’s body off his lover, who grimaced with distaste. Alec pulled him to his feet. “Were you hit?”

“The first arrow grazed my shoulder, no worse.”

Alec frowned. “Let me pour a little wine over it. Those bastards dip their arrows in their own shit.”

“I'm fine, _talí_ ,” Seregil protested. “It didn’t break the skin.”

Alec gave him a hard look. “Go sit on that boulder and take off your tunic.”

“Alec—”

“Sit on that boulder, take off your tunic, and shut up. Better yet, shut up first, then do the rest.”

Seregil glared back at him, but Alec didn’t drop or soften his gaze. Finally, with a loud sigh that was far more galling than the staring contest had been, Seregil turned around. He was seated on the rock, bare to the waist, by the time Alec had found their half-full wineskin and cut a relatively clean piece of linen from his bedroll.

“‘Didn’t break the skin,’ my ass,” Alec muttered, swiping none too gently at the angry red streak on his lover’s shoulder with the sodden bit of cloth.

Seregil sucked in his breath. “I want to get the hell out of here before more of them show up,” he grunted.

“We won’t get to Watermead any faster if you take fever.” Alec wadded up the blood-streaked linen and pocketed it for later burning, just in case there _were_ more of them to show up and they were competent trackers. For all he knew, the necromancers were freelancing these days too.

“Alec?”

“Yes?” he demanded, still irritated with Seregil for being willing to take such a stupid risk.

Seregil shrugged back into his tunic. “Were my senses deceiving me, or was there a second archer with you?”

Alec froze on his feet, stared into the leaves of the giant oak, and said nothing.

Seregil tilted his head back to look at him. “Well?” he finally demanded.

Very carefully, Alec said, “I heard someone shooting from above me, and I looked up. I saw a woman’s bare foot clinging to a branch, and I could see the rest of her move from behind the leaves, wielding a bow. But after we’d — after all the bandits had been killed, I looked up again and she wasn’t there. I’d have heard her climbing down or trying to leap or running away, but I didn’t.”

Seregil was quiet for a moment longer, then said, “There’s something else you’re not telling me.”

One could keep the details of a secret from from one’s _talímenios_ , but not the fact of the secret itself. Alec figured he might as well admit it bluntly. “You’re right. Do you remember that dream I had the other night?”

His lover arched a solitary brow. “Same woman?”

“I saw only her foot and lower shin this time, but her flesh was the same color as in the dream. I’d swear to it, Seregil.”

The other brow joined the first. “Why didn’t you want to tell me?”

“I would have told you later. As you said, we need to leave, and it wasn’t urgent news.”

They took the time to strip the dead bandits. Behind the masks, five of the eight were Skalans. “They’re making common cause now?” Alec exclaimed. He felt more disgust for them than for the dead Plenimarans.

Seregil shrugged. “Why not? There’s safety in numbers. Not so much in trying to convince yourself you’re still a patriot when there’s a deserter’s noose out there with your name on it.” He’d already taken the sword of the young man he’d killed. Searching the bodies also netted them some perfectly serviceable shorter blades, various rings and earrings, and a few handfuls of coins and loose jewels.

They retrieved as many arrows as they could, sniffing them first and discarding those that had been purposefully befouled. The arrows shot by the woman in the tree were well but simply made; Alec didn’t recognize the fletcher’s hand. He refilled his quiver, then bundled the rest of the arrows into the cleanest of the bandits’ shirts. Before leaving, they obscured their bootprints as best they could, then wiped their boots clean of any blood and stowed the rags to be burnt the next time they made camp.

About an hour later, as Cynril and Windrunner cantered across an open field, Seregil remarked, “There’s a Temple of Illior in Isil. I think we’ve got enough coin now to spare a few for its coffers.”

Alec had been thinking about the honey-skinned archer for the last hour himself. Rather quietly, he replied, “I daresay you’re right.”

 

In the handful of years she’d been with the Skalan Army, Beka had taken more blows from Plenimaran swords than she could count. Any such blow jarred the body deeply, especially if one faced a taller, heavier enemy soldier. Many had drawn blood from her, some more than others.

This was the first time she’d ever felt a blade grind against bone.

She hadn’t slept in two days or eaten much in three, and it was making her clumsy. Thank the Flame it wasn’t her sword arm that had been laid open. She didn’t even peek at the damage as she lunged again, nor did she let herself dwell on the fact that it felt like the arm had been struck with Benshâl fire. Distraction, in addition to fatigue, would let the bastard finish her off, and the sight of the wound could very well unnerve her.

Their blades clashed together again. She glared fiercely, teeth bared, into the dark face, which broke into a sneer. “Whore-soldier. Maybe I take you to camp, we all fuck nice fresh hole in your arm instead of used-up one between your legs.”

After crossing swords with so many Plenimarans, who kept their own women under lock and key, she’d heard every insult to women soldiers imaginable. She’d thought rape threats had long since ceased to unsettle her. This one, coupled with the searing pain in her arm, was unsettling.

She covered her unease with her own malicious grin. “Or maybe I’ll have my men take turns fucking the stump where your head was, and then we’ll all shit down it,” she replied as casually as if she were predicting the weather. Then she pulled back, gathered herself, and swung at his thighs from the side. He all but danced out of her way, then lashed out again. She ducked, but the point of his sword caught the back of her hand, leaving a thin red stripe. She permitted herself a hiss of pain.

It took another dozen steps in the mortal dance of thrust, parry, thrust, parry, before she realized the difference in the coldness inside her. It was no longer bright, nor was it purposeful. It was dim, growing ever dimmer, and it was eating away at the cunning of her sword hand, not unlike the actual cold of a bitter winter’s day.

Her left arm wasn’t cold at all. It felt like an ingot of lead in Sakor’s own forge: white-hot and heavy. The hand felt sticky, and the shield grip was slippery in her fingers.

The Plenimaran was smirking. He knew he had time on his side. She knew he was watching her eyes, as one did in battle. She had seen the fog of mortal injury creep into the eyes of her opponents many times before, sometimes well before they fell at her feet. She knew that’s what he saw in hers.

Suddenly there was a hard, lean form pressed tight to her left side, behind the wounded arm, and a new sword raised high above her head. The man hadn’t slammed himself hard into her, as one sometimes did to one’s shieldsibling in the heat of battle, but ultimately it wouldn’t matter. Every blow he traded with the Plenimaran rang down his blade and into both their bodies, rattling her teeth and jarring her wound with a sick-making pain that scorched her gullet with bile. She dug her teeth into her tongue and continued to press forward as best she could.

Another Plenimaran joined his comrade in the fray, but before he could fully engage, her shieldbrother’s sword tore his throat open. He fell across the first Plenimaran, and the first man stumbled under his weight. With a burst of exultant fury, Beka lashed out and kicked him hard. He fell on his back, and then her boot was on his chest and her sword twisting in his belly as he squawked his death-cries. She vividly imagined spooling his guts out on the tip of it and flinging them at his comrades; with effort, she suppressed the urge to. A shame, really, because that effort also seemed to quell that final burst of angry vitality.

She tried to stand up straight and turn to thank her shieldbrother. The world tilted queasily around her, and the ground felt slippery beneath her boots. The man, now standing half a pace behind her, asked her a question. She didn’t understand his language, didn’t think she’d ever even heard it before, but she knew what he asked.

“No,” she said, “I'm fi—”

When she next opened her eyes, she was on her back and she could see the skin of a tent far above her. From the close, reeking air and the groans, she figured it was the drysians’ tent. Her head was throbbing in time with her left arm. The dim cold still lurked within her, now with a sickly edge to it; it seemed to cling to her innards like mold on bread.

“Captain?”

Hazily she tried to focus on the woman bending over her, a woman whose thick braid was equal parts dark and gray and whose face was heavily lined.

“Sit up. I need to get a tisane into you.”

The last thing she wanted was to sit up, but not even a general would disobey a drysian. Shakily, she tried to thrust out her right arm behind her to lever herself up. The drysian put a strong arm behind her shoulders and helped draw her up into a sitting position. Then she pressed a cup to Beka’s lips.

The second-to-last thing Beka wanted was to be drugged back into oblivion, as a hundred questions were peppering her mind like so many arrows. But she obediently took a long draught of the bitter concoction, breathing deeply to quell the undulations in her gut that threatened to send it all back up again. When she’d swallowed as much as she could, the drysian blotted her mouth with a linen and gently pushed her back down.

“Poppy juice?” she croaked.

“A little, though mostly willow bark and feverfew and garlic. You need to rest, to build up the blood you’ve lost. I’ve cleaned your wound and stitched it shut, but if you get back on the field right away the stitches will come undone with your flesh not yet knitted back together, and you’re like to take infection again. You wouldn’t be able to hold a shield for at least a week, in any case.”

Beka didn’t groan. It would have been beneath her, and it would have taken up too much energy anyway. Energy she needed for a question.

“Who brought me here?”

The drysian looked startled. “One of your men, I believe. He wore a wolfskin cloak, as you had on.”

“Describe him?”

The older woman blinked slowly in recollection, then said, “He was very tall, very lean. I saw a lock of sandy-colored hair sticking out from under his helmet and the wolf’s-head. His eyes were a very light blue. And everywhere I could see on him — hands, forearms, face — he was as freckled as you are.”

Darkness was tugging at the edges of Beka’s mind. She managed one more question: “What did he say?”

Before it closed over her head, she heard the reply: “Very little. He was carrying you in his arms, he transferred you into mine, and he said to me, ‘See to her,’ as if he had the command of me. And he turned and left, and we have not seen him again since.”

 

A woman in a white robe greeted them outside the temple and took the horses’ reins from them, as well as their weapons. Seregil pressed a coin into her hand, then settled himself on the bench to the right of the main door.

Alec shot him a look of apprehension. Seregil returned one of encouragement but also sympathy; his own experiences in Temples of Illior had been, at best, fraught. He wouldn’t have idly recommended that Alec visit one in supplication.

Inside the portico, Alec took off his boots and stood them at the end of a long row of footwear. He unbound his hair, stowing the ribbon in the pocket opposite that which held the bloodied rags. Then he began to undress, suppressing the habitual twinge of ill-at-ease modesty with a reminder to himself that no shame attached to nakedness here. He had not forsworn Dalna, his cradle patron, but Illior was the god of what he’d become: a spy and a thief. As well as the god with the answers, if there _were_ answers, to his questions.

 _Two bloods, two lives, two gods,_ he thought.

As he placed his haphazardly folded clothing on a shelf above the row of boots, a novice approached him, silver mask in hand. The boy couldn’t have been more than fourteen. As Alec accepted the mask and proffered a coin of his own, he noted the black outline of the dragon on the novice's palm, its twelve colors yet to be filled in over the coming years.

“Carry the Light,” the boy said, his smile of welcome gentle and genuine. For Alec, it brought Nysander to mind, and the bittersweet ache of that memory turned his voice husky as he replied, “There is no darkness.”

Isil’s Temple of Illior wasn’t as grand as Rhíminee’s. There was no Circle of Contemplation ringed with pillars of alabaster, no separate rooms for those who had fasted in preparation for prophetic visions or spiritual journeys. One meditation chamber sufficed for all, and it was laid out much like that in Sarikali: low, long, and windowless. The only light was from clay lamps in niches and from the braziers burning at intervals in the middle of the broad central aisle, the latter sending up heavy clouds of aromatic smoke. Here as in Rhíminee, however, the ceiling was painted with a series of meditation symbols, repeating over and over above the two long rows of pallets. Today nearly twenty supplicants lay naked and dreaming, faceless under their masks. The only sounds were soft, rhythmic breathing and the crackle and hiss of flame.

Alec walked to the very end of the chamber, the white tiles cool against his soles. Only one pallet of the last ten was occupied. He chose one in the row opposite, knelt, and stretched out upon it. Breathing deeply, he gazed upward through the eyeholes of the mask. Directly above him, he saw, was the symbol called the Cloud Eye, that of things unseen, the realm of imagination, magic and prophecy, dreams and madness.

Meditation was not something he was much inclined to by either nature or nurture; an archer and hunter is, by necessity, a wakeful watcher of the physical world. Nor did the practice figure greatly in Dalnan worship. He’d therefore declined to break his fast with Seregil that morning so that the dreaming herbs might affect him more quickly. Before long, he began to feel the telltale shifts of perception, reminiscent of how the dream-world begins to seep into the mind of one falling asleep for the night. He held his gaze loosely on the Eye and let thoughts come to him as they would, and the chamber began to fade from around him.

_Suddenly, he is looking not into one eye but two, and they are a brilliant green, as lush and verdant as Bôkthersa after rain._

_The first thing that strikes him is her beauty, the second thing the nature of it. The tilt of her eyes and the arch of her cheekbones vaguely recall the Q’in they fought together, as well as the seventh Q’in — her lover, he understands somehow — who rode to her defense. But with her fairer skin and her green eyes she could pass, almost, for a woman of the Three Lands._

_Third is the heavy, rank scent. Not of her herself; she seems clean of body and clothes now, dark hair well-washed and gleaming, fingernails free of grime. But from somewhere beyond her — he'd swear by heart, hands, and eyes — he can smell bear. The scent is accompanied by a faint but distinct snuffling and snorting. He wonders if it’s her intrinsic nature, separated somehow from her human form._

_Fourth, and last, she is god-marked. Alec has a brief vision of a being who cups a seedling in his palm. From him she takes gifts of fertility, not that of people but of green growing things._

_But the one she serves is a bright she-god whose soft glow settles upon her like a hooded mantle. Not Illior; not any other of the Four. This woman is not mad, not in the slightest, nor is she one to shut herself away from the world. That same part of his mind says,_ It is a god of desire she serves. One whose gift is holy and honorable. _It is not the gift of Dalna, yoked strictly to the bearing of children, but it is utterly without stain, other than what the willful choose to see in it._

 _And with that understanding comes another: That gift is not what connects her to Alec. Perhaps her own man, the staff-bearer, is not a jealous lover. But she knows that Alec is bound in faithfulness by_ talímenios _. She will no more seek to violate that bond than he himself would break a vow to the Maker or the Lightbearer._

_What is she to him? A sister-in-arms; an equal with a bow. Perhaps more than an equal, rare for him to meet. He can think of no first words to her more apt than, “You’re a damned good shot.”_

_She inclines her head in acknowledgment; her calm, confident smile doesn’t waver. “I’ve been shooting for the pot since I was ten years old.”_

_“You started that late?” Alec says mildly, and this provokes a broad grin. He returns it._

_“You shoot quite well yourself...” Then she peers at him oddly, as if his face carries vague memories for her as well. She tilts her head in inquiry this time and purses her lips, and her next word sounds like “…_ D'Angeline? _”_

_Alec shakes his head. He isn’t sure what the word means, but he knows, somehow, the answer is no._

_There’s a hint of perplexity to her smile now. “You have something of that beauty,” she presses. “Sharp and symmetrical. Like your black bow, or your lover’s favorite sword. A weapon, yourself.”_

_He blinks. He’s not become so inured to flattery that he no longer blushes at it, but he’s heard his share of it and more since he came down from the North, and most of it is puddle-deep and bestowed with obvious ulterior motives. He’s never heard so double-edged a compliment to his beauty — as she claims is true of his beauty itself. Yet he can’t take it amiss, he finds. He thinks of how often he’s wielded charm instead of a bow or a sword or a pick, just as Seregil has. He understands._

_He shakes his head again and says, “It’s the look of the Hâzadriëlfaie. I am half their blood, half Tír.”_

_She nods, although he isn’t certain she understands. “I am half D'Angeline,” she says. “And half_ Maghuin Dhonn. _”_

_He’s never heard those last two words before, either, but the uncanny bit of his mind translates them immediately. “Brown bear,” he whispers._

_She smiles, and the animal scent grows stronger. Behind her, anywhere from an inch beyond to a world away, he sees moonlight glint auburn in the fur of a broad, arching back. Then he is looking into a pair of dark eyes that are older, wiser, than that of even the oldest Aurënfaie — and profoundly sad, too. The hairs on his arms and neck lift again. This is no one’s intrinsic nature; this is another she-god. He knows She will not harm him, but he vibrates with Her presence like the strings of a harp._

_The dream-archer reaches out her hand, lays it on his cheek. “Dragon’s child,” she says, and he jolts in surprise._

_“Yes,” he says hoarsely. “The Great Dragon. One of his many children. The ’faie.”_

_“The Great Dragon,” she echoes, the words turning on her lips with a note of wonder. And he is struck with a sudden vision of a white mountaintop reflected in the most pristine lake one can imagine, a translucent jade-green — and coils of pearlescent white scales elegantly wound about the tip of the peak._

_“I… don’t think it’s the same one,” he says. A sudden memory touches him with both a shiver of dread and a pang of loss. Yet he manages a faint smile._

_“It might very well be,” she says. She is smiling again. “Do you know for certain it’s not?”_

_He realizes that he doesn’t, and he would shake his head no except that her hand is still on his cheek. On impulse, he reaches up and covers it with his own. The fingers beneath his are slender and strong, the knuckles and cuticles rough to his glove-softened touch._

_He knows, somehow, not to ask her who she is or whence she comes. The question that rises to his lips instead is, “Will we fight together again?”_

_“That,” she says, still smiling, “is for only my Mother, and your Immortals, to know.”_

Then there was no pair of green eyes before him anymore, only the Cloud Eye’s vacant downward gaze.

Alec lay blinking for a while, coming back to himself, before he slowly sat up on the pallet. There were more supplicants in the chamber now, though a few who had been there when he'd first come in were now gone. When he felt his head to have cleared sufficiently, he rose.

On the other side of the door to the portico, out of the braziers’ warmth, he shivered. He removed his mask to find that the novice had come to stand silently and unobtrusively beside him. Alec handed the silvered slip of parchment and hardened glue back to the boy, who returned the same warm smile as before but didn’t speak. Alec was deeply grateful: The vision still sat upon him like the dream-archer’s mantle-like glow, and words spoken aloud would have violated it.

When he emerged from the temple, clad again and hair rebraided, Seregil rose from the bench with an expectant look. Alec came to him, his throat still tight, but whatever Seregil felt along the _talímenios_ bond must have sufficed in its eloquence. He regarded Alec for a moment with eyes just as eloquent before he pushed a stray lock of fair hair out of the younger man’s eyes, leaned forward, slid his hand around the back of Alec’s neck, and pressed their foreheads together.

After a long moment, he said quietly, “I’ll find the stable-mistress,” and Alec merely nodded in response.

 

_When Beka next comes to, her head feels packed with Northern wool, her arm still hurts but no longer throbs violently, and her belly is growling. She smells mutton broth somewhere, but she can’t see any bowls when she lifts her head from her cot. Then she realizes there’s no way she’d be able to manage a bowl on her own. There are no drysians or acolytes in her corner of the large tent, and she’s still too hoarse to call for one._

_“Shit,” she hisses. If none of them are around to box her ear for blasphemy, she’s going to indulge herself in it to the fullest. “The Gatekeeper’s stinking, unwashed sack. Diseased oozing cunt of Illior. Dalna, Maker of All, including pigfucking Plenimaran whoresons with mouths full of shit and flies.”_

_“As I’ve said before in remarkably similar circumstances, anyone who can curse that impressively has got to be on the mend.”_

_It’s a young man’s voice, mocking but, she thinks, not maliciously so. Just as before, she understands the words without even knowing the name of the tongue in which he speaks._

_She looks up and notes that he’s just as the drysian described him. The iron helmet is gone and the wolf’s head of his cloak thrown back, revealing a cap of straight sandy hair. The features of his clean-shaven, well-freckled face are somewhat boyish after a sharp fashion, but the impression is offset by a few whitened scars on one side and by a vaguely familiar crooked grin. He wears the same garments he’d worn in battle, still stained, although she smells no sweat or battle gore on them._

_And he is holding a bowl of what smells like warm mutton broth._

_“Here,” he says, settling himself on the edge of her cot. Gently he slips his free arm under her head to tilt it upwards, then holds the bowl to her mouth._

_She flushes, turning her head slightly. “That’s not necessary.”_

_“Fuck your pride,” he says, sounding less angry than amused. “I did this for my own commander, I can do it for you. I owe you that much.”_

_“You’ve discharged your debt already,” she says curtly._

_“Consider it paid in full once you’ve had at least half the bowl.”_

_She sighs, realizing it’d be the easiest course of action. Her stomach is raving again anyway; she’d have no luck convincing him she’s not hungry._

_“How many days has it been since the battle?” she asks a moment later, licking the broth from her lips. It’s rich and thick and she could drink a barrel of it._

_“Just two.”_

_“And who prevailed?” She takes another sip._

_“Your men did.”_

_“My_ people _,” she corrects him automatically._

 _“Forgive me; where I'm from women warriors are the exception and not the rule. Your_ people _were highly irate when they learned what had happened to you, and they took their rage out on your enemy. They must value your command of them highly.”_

_“Thank you,” she says, for the information and for the compliment. She drains the rest of the bowl, and he sets it aside. She notes, again, the freckles that cover the arm closest to her._

_“I haven’t seen many folk with freckles outside of where my father grew up,” she says. “Are we kin somehow, on his side?”_

_“I don’t know your father. Then again, I don’t know my own, so it’s entirely possible.”_

_She catches the barest flash of pain in the light-colored eyes. Now she knows whom his grin reminds her of. This man doesn’t sheathe the barbs of his wit quite as ably as her uncle does his. Then again, she senses in him no desire to do so — and, likely, fighting as he does only on the most literal of battlefields, he has no need._

_He gets to his feet; she regards him as closely as she’s been able to since her dream. Not a man she’d seek out for pleasure, she thinks, even if it weren’t for Nyal. But he’s well-made in his own rangy way, no less built for battle than men like her father or women like herself. She thinks again of her uncle, not nearly as tall but just as slender; behind any good sword in his hand he’s a sinuous line of muscle and nerve in continuous motion._

_Her shieldbrother smiles down at her, more genuinely this time, though not completely without mockery. She wonders if he’s capable of a smile without mockery. She finds herself grinning back just as wryly. And she senses that she’s seeing a smile of farewell._

_“May I have the pleasure of knowing the name and rank of the man who saved my life?” she asks, but she knows before she’s finished what the answer will be._

_He shakes his head slightly, still smiling. “Even if there were time, which there isn’t, I couldn’t begin to explain.” He puts his hand on her forehead. “Rest now.”_

“Feeling better?” the drysian asked a few seconds later.

Beka blinked into full wakefulness. “Considerably.” She did, to her surprise.

“Well and good. Let’s get some broth into you. I'm told your family homestead is three days away. Commander Klia is sending you there to mend, with your husband to accompany you. You’ll need some strength for the ride.”

Beka frowned. “But I just _had_ some broth.”

The older woman returned the confused frown. “You’ve had nothing to eat since you were brought here two days ago, nor to drink other than the tisane. You haven’t been conscious long enough for it.”

The hair on the nape of her neck stood up. She raised her head and propped herself up slightly on her right elbow.

“The man who brought me here. The tall, lean one,” she said.

“Yes, what of him?”

“Did he ever come back?”

The drysian shook her head. “I’ve not seen him again, nor has anyone else under my command spoken of seeing him again.”

 

“Alec! Uncle!” she called out as her parents accompanied them into the parlor.

Neither of them could respond right away, as Seregil’s arms were suddenly full of Gherin, Luthas was clinging like a burr to his legs, and Alec had crouched to embrace Illia fully. Both of them were laughing, despite the old flicker of pain in Seregil’s eyes that the sight of Luthas always brought him. While it was too early to tell, Beka’s sense was that her foster-brother would one day embrace and thank Seregil with tears in his eyes for bringing him to such a loving new family after the horrific slaughter of his own blood-kin. She hoped that when that day finally came, Seregil might be able to forgive himself. Not a high hope, but a hope nonetheless.

Eventually the children drew back enough to let Alec and Seregil approach the chair in which Beka sat with her arm in a sling. Both of them wore grins that could have split their faces, but their eyes were at once fierce with pride and wide with relief. Grinning like a fool herself, she hauled herself up with her good arm so that she could fling it around her uncle first, her near-brother next. They responded by pulling her close against the both of them at once, careful not to jostle her wounded arm in the embrace.

“Your father told us what happened when we rode up. How’s the wound healing?” Seregil asked with what she knew to be deceptive insouciance.

“There’s no infection anymore, thanks to the drysians. But it still hurts like hell.”

“Bilairy’s Balls, of course it does!” Alec exclaimed. “It was laid open less than a week ago!”

“And you got here only this morning, and every hoofbeat along the way must have jolted it,” her father said. There was no remonstration in his voice, as there would have been in her mother’s. He’d had plenty of experience riding, walking, and fighting when his own wounds should have relegated him to bed.

“Wait until winter,” her uncle said with a rueful smile. “It’ll remind you every damned day. Every damned winter. And every late autumn and early spring to boot.”

“Little brothers!” Nyal stepped forward from somewhere behind her chair and clasped arms with Seregil and Alec, then pulled each into a rough hug. Though any suspicion they’d ever had of him had long faded, still it did Beka’s heart good to see them greet him only with pleasure.

“I take it Klia had you escort your Captain home?” Seregil asked.

“She did,” Nyal replied. “I’ll have to return in a few days, but she decided she could spare me for that long.”

“Then I suppose I needn’t ask you how married life goes for you,” Alec said with a smile.

“It suits us quite well.” Nyal returned the smile, resting his hand on Beka’s shoulder. Beka reached up with her good hand and covered his.

The next few hours were spent in talk, laughter, and wine. The children darted about the parlor, Illia switching back and forth with ease between carefree playmate and watchful older sister. Sometimes Gherin toddled over to Beka’s chair, eyes wide, to take in the only sib who resembled him and their father, a sib who wasn’t home often enough for him. She’d ruffle his bright hair with her good hand and offer to tell him bedtime stories about brave soldiers who fought like demon wolves.

At one point Alec was crouching by the chair too, ruffling Gherin’s hair himself. Beka touched his arm with her good hand. He looked up, and she said quietly, “Let’s talk in private for a bit.”

They made their excuses; it seemed her timing was perfect. Seregil slipped out the back door in the direction of the privy. Beka’s parents each slung a small tired child over his or her shoulder, and Illia followed them out of the parlor toward the boys’ bedchamber.

Meanwhile, Alec walked Beka out to the front porch with his arm about her waist, then settled her into a chair.

“Please, Alec,” she grumbled. “It’s my arm, not my leg, that’s wounded.”

“And you nearly bled to death of it. Why shouldn’t I help you conserve your strength, _talía_?”

She smiled. Even Seregil didn’t call her that, and he was a second father to her. Alec had only ever used it before to address his lover’s sisters; well, three of them, at any rate. Maybe it was Nyal’s influence. Or maybe it was because she’d had a glimpse of Bilairy’s Gate.

“So what did you want to talk about?” he asked, leaning against a post.

She bit her lip. She had a healthy respect, as any wise person did, of things not of this world. But other than soldier’s prayers to Sakor, she’d had little truck with them, and she’d long been happy for it to remain that way. Now, though… how did a blunt-spoken Army captain with both boots planted firmly on the earth talk about such matters? Maybe her half-’faie near-brother, scarred as much by magic as by battle and afraid of neither, would help her find the words.

Slowly, her eyes on Alec’s, Beka began: “Well, it all started a week ago — with a dream.”


End file.
